Many types of surgery, including orthopedic and neurosurgery, require cutting through bone to gain access to the surgical site. Bone is a porous material containing numerous blood vessels; in compact bone the blood vessels are in the Haversian canals and in the spongy bone they are in large spaces which contain the marrow. For purposes of this disclosure, the openings in the bone containing the blood vessels will be referred to as "pores". Cutting the bone causes a substantial amount of bleeding, management of which must be achieved before proceeding further with the surgery. The most common technique for minimizing the blood loss from the cut bone is to fill the bone pores containing the blood vessels with beeswax. This procedure uses any of a number of spoon or spatula-like devices of various sizes (depending on the pore size to be filled) which a surgical assistant dips into a container of wax, scooping out a small amount of wax. The surgical assistant hands the device to the surgeon who directly applies the wax to the bone pore. The surgeon returns the device to the assistant who prepares another application of wax, repeating the procedure until all bone pores along the incision are filled to prevent further bleeding so the surgeon can proceed with the operation. The process of handing the instrument back-and-forth between the assistant and the surgeon is tedious and time consuming, as well as providing opportunity for dropping the device.
It would therefore be desirable to provide an apparatus for applying beeswax to surgically cut bone to inhibit bleeding which does not require repeated reloading or handling of an applicator. It is to such apparatus that the present invention is directed.